Television has assaulted the printed word for 80 years now, dealing a series of body blows that universal literacy education cannot halt.

But books and newspapers are still hanging on.

The problem with the visual media versus the print media is that it is easier to produce engaging visual media than it is to produce engaging print media. Print is just harder. For the average consumer, it’s less rewarding to read than to watch.

A basic form of reading is involved in sending texts over cell phones. At least you’re using words in that case in some fashion. The level of writing is rudimentary, unskilled, and basic, but it is at least there.

Writing could make a comeback if there is a quantum leap in the performance of authors. That would require that there be more Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings in the picture than there currently are. As writers age, they become shittier. The motivation to work hard at the printed word just isn’t there anymore. King has 5 good years from 1974 to 1978 and then reached a somewhat lower plateau in the early Eighties before dropping off completely. Rowling’s gone into hiding under a male pseudonym whose sales haven’t been matching her previous ones, indicating she’s gotten worse.

People need compelling written material that is easy-to-digest. Without this, there is no fixing the intrinsic problems with the book and newspaper markets, which are oversaturated by too many competitors chasing too few dollars.

Perhaps also a vast culling of the current providers would help. In the case of newspapers, it might make sense for there to be only a few supernewspapers per country, with branch offices in each major city to make a token nod to local news. By concentrating resources and hiring only the best, these supernewspapers could perhaps recoup some of the lost readers who have gone by the wayside these last few decades.

There is a power and compelling element to print which television can’t match, but it is difficult to capture the magic and bottle it. Television has a natural hypnotic effect. It is the painting that moves and speaks. You can spend a lifetime looking at it and still not tire of it, even while complaining that “there’s nothing to watch on the air.”

Writers need to stop copying obscure writers and start writing for the masses. Ethnic writers in particular are guilty of this. Most of the best writers are white, and they have learned to write for everybody rather than writing the “black woman’s experience,” the “Asian male’s experience,” et cetera. A writer like Amy Tan, who writes about her minority ethnic group, is failing the larger market. And the larger market is all that counts.

Should there be books about the queer lifestyle? Why? Gays are only a small fraction of the overall population, and lesbians virtually nonexistent. The extreme fragmentation of the market has resulted in decreased overall sales all in an attempt to appease the dominant left-wing political ideology.

James Patterson has done a good service by his career. He won the Edgar Award for his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, but that book saw limited sales. Retooling his approach, he came up with Alex Cross, a Washington cop tracking serial killers. Later he began an assembly production line with other novelists, co-producing books by the truckload that were all skilled enough and readable enough to make his books one of every 19 books sold in the U.S.

Linwood Barclay likewise adjusted a disastrous course path with his writings. He wrote lighthearted crime capers that didn’t sell before shifting into more serious dramas that were accessible to the majority. These writers woke up. There’s still more work to be done, and the writing has to get better still, but compared to the stiff, ornate days of Charles Dickens the craft has evolved, and will continue to evolve. Brutal conditions for writers will ensure that only the best rise to the top of their game. This competition is natural and healthy, forcing authors to work hard when they’re alone constructing plots and newspaper articles. Television may not be able to be beaten, but it can be fought to a draw. Books can do things the screen can’t, and those unique features should be showcased by new authors coming on the scene.